ROSANNE Cash and her band head for The Sage Gateshead next Saturday night to play the only show in the UK on this summer’s European tour.

She does play a gig in Scotland the following day with her husband, guitarist/ producer John Leventhal, but this is the one chance to see her with the band.

I spoke to Rosanne recently and asked her what she has been doing recently. She tells me: "I’m still touring, obviously. My memoir, Composed, comes out on August 10 (in the US). It’s not a straight chronology, I like to think it’s a bit more poetic than that.

"Childhood memories and how they play out in the present are in there but it’s about music and songs, too. I’m a writer and I can’t imagine being anything else. Whether it’s prose or songs, it’s kind of all the same to me. That’s what I feel most passionate about."

Plainly, Rosanne is passionate about music too. Was country music a fixture of her early years, I ask? "Oh my gosh, no. I didn’t really care about country music until I was an adult!

"I grew up listening to the Beatles – I grew up in southern California – and I’m very much a product of Woodstock music. I didn’t care about country music, it was something my parents listened to.

"I don’t even think it was deliberate. The Beatles and the British invasion was enormously significant, there’s no way I couldn’t have been affected by that.

"So when I went on the road with my dad when I was 18, he started teaching me all these songs, then I developed a real appreciation of roots music, southern music, early folk music."

It is also quite obvious that the Man In Black was a real mentor to his eldest daughter, as Rosanne explains: "Yes, he very much was a mentor. He was very encouraging about the fact that I wanted to write songs.

"You know, my terrible young songs, he would always give me praise and encouragement. When I was trying to find my voice, he was always giving me encouragement. He was a great artist whose music happened to be claimed by the country music establishment.

"Folk, delta music, protest songs, all of that was terribly important to him." That depth of knowledge was passed down from Johnny, too. He gave Rosanne a list of his 100 greatest country/American songs as a sort of reference and Rosanne chose 12 from that selection for her much- praised 2009 album, The List.

"I feel very proud of it," she tells me. "We expanded on those songs and brought my own sensibility to them."

Sea of Heartbreak gets a makeover at the hands of Rosanne and Bruce Springsteen. It is not instantly recognisable as The Boss but Rosanne says: "I think he really relished the chance to get in touch with his inner crooner."

Given the life she has lived, her memoirs ought to be a terrific read. I’m curious to know if, with hindsight, there are any fundamental things that she would change in that life. "I think I would change some of my choices, particularly when I was in my 20s. I was a bit erratic and I made some bad choices, but hey, who doesn’t? Fundamental things, no." Finally, I just need to check that the eclectic Cash gene is still in evidence and I ask what Rosanne’s kids are listening to. "Oh, hip-hop, Dolly Parton, Leonard Cohen, Green Day, but so do I, actually," she laughs.

Rosanne Cash and her full band play the Sage’s Hall 1 on Saturday, July 24.